Wall-E Demo: Collecting Rubbish?

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You can have a quick go of THQ’s tie-in game for Pixar’s forthcoming Wall-E now, should you wish. It’s available here, and weighs 219Mb. Thoughts below.

After THQ’s real high with the Cars tie-in, the demo’s offerings are a huge disappointment. Of the two chapters available, one is an abysmal downhill course that’s over in about a minute and offers no challenge whatsoever. The other, much more sizeable, is third-person pursuit platforming, which requires you get your jumps and slides correct or you’ll lose track of Eve, the robot wot you fancy. These courses, although broken into different sections, become quickly very repetitive.

It’s a real shame that no one thought to get the Mr Robot developers involved, or thought to do something more than a slap-dash platform. Of course, perhaps the demo showcases the game at its worst. We shall see. I’m still convinced the film is going to rock out loud.

I’m telling you, the Cars Radiator Spings Somethingorother THQ put out was really lovely. No masterpiece, but completely fun to play and perfectly pitched at younger kids (under 12s). I gave 77% in Format.

Here’s to hoping for more stuff from the Riddickverse.
And of course Wall*E looks great. The movie that is. All Pixar movies were and looked great. Pixar are just… Divine when it comes to entertainment.

Weren’t they supposed to be doing a bigger meaner remake of the original Riddick game? I’d totally play that. It was a linear FPS sure, but apart from a couple of crappy sections, the overall game had much better atmosphere and gameplay than Deus Ex 2 and even offered hints of open ended design in stuff like the prison area. A remake that exploited the better features further (melee, stealth, mechs, atmosphere, graphics, grittyness, hollywood plot) and ditched what simply didn’t work (100% linear mech sections and some crappy bosses) would be well worth a play through or two. Maybe I’d wait for it more eagerly than FEAR’s sequel or a new COD…

Chronicles of Riddick was an interesting case. My friend saw it in theatres, sad it sucked ass, then decided to suffer through it again with me on DVD–and liked it. Apprently the theatrical cut sliced away things that were necessary for the plot to make sense. And, IIRC, Butcher Bay was a semi-prequel to Chronicles.

More on topic, I’ll add The Punisher to the list of good video game conversions. It wasn’t phenomenal, but it was lots’o’fun. Woodchipper for the win.

Valve working with Pixar licenses? That would certainly interesting..but you know how the Chinese curse goes.

I still think Alien versus Predator (the first one) is the role model for a perfect movie-based game. Fun in single player, fun with other people, and has headbitey. I dunno how you can work headbitey into a Pixar game, but if you could, I’d give it two more stars. Even in a numeric rating system.